Best Educational Websites:


Reading Skills

When you are looking for ways to help your children improve their learning skills, especially their reading skills, you want to find the best of the best and you want to do that quickly. What if you are looking to find the best reading educational website? Where do you go? BonnieTerryLearning.com has just been named one of the top 101 educational websites and the top in the category of reading.

Why is bonnieterrylearning.com one the top reading skills website in the list of 101 Best Educational Websites?

One of the reasons bonnieterrylearning.com was chosen to be the top reading website is because they offer both an understanding of what is involved with learning to read – the 3 roadblocks to reading success as well as solutions to those roadblocks. Most education websites do not do that. Bonnie explains in detail exactly why children struggle with reading and then gives you specific solutions that you as a parent can implement with ease.

Some of her solutions only take 5 minutes a day. Some of them take only 10 minutes a day, and some of the solutions are games that you can play and really make a difference with your children’s reading skills. Be sure to check out bonnieterrylearning.com as well as the other best educational websites.

Bonnie Terry, a Board Certified Educational Therapist and Learning Disabilities Specialist has been teaching well over 37 years and brings that experience to her site, sharing with you how she discovered the roadblocks to reading, writing, and math success. She shares with you real stories of her kids and her students. She shares her passion with you to make learning easy for everyone.

Named Top Educational Websites, Top 100 Educational Advice Blogs, and Top 50 Educators to follow on Twitter Offering Reading Skills Advice

In addition to being named in the 101 list of Best Education Websites, Bonnie’s s blog has been named in the top 100 education advice blogs to follow and one of the top 50 education experts on Twitter to follow.

When do you start giving your kids reading help? When do you teach them reading readiness?

You would be amazed at the number of children I’ve seen over the years that have needed reading help that didn’t have a solid foundation of reading readiness skills.  This goes for children that are in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th grade. So, when I received the following question from Karen, I thought it would be a good idea to shed some light on reading help and reading readiness.

I just received a letter from Karen regarding activities for teaching her triplets.

Karen writes:

“My triplets are 5 yrs. old and in kindergarten this year.  One is a special needs child.  I could use ideas for teaching multiples.  There is no older sibling to model.  Also, trying to work with our special needs daughter and the others creates many challenges.”

Hi Karen,

I know what you mean about challenges – working with 3 kids at the same time and one of them being a special needs child can be difficult.

Here are some tips for working with  kids at the same time – whether they are in kindergarten or any of the primary grades.

I would pick a time to work with each of the kids individually – for 10 to 15 minutes so they get some individual time with you. While working with one of them the other two can be doing something like coloring or listening to a book on tape.

In fact, you can even read their favorite books into a tape – at a speed that is comfortable for them to listen to and then they can listen to you reading to them – following along with your voice – while you are doing some individual work/activity with the others. Then you are still being ‘present’ to the one/s you aren’t working with.

You might even set up a special spot with their stuffed animals and a large pillow where they get to listen to the books. So it winds up being the ‘special place’ where they get to listen to stories.

Also, I would do things like playing Simon Says, bean- bag toss, hop-scotch, or red light green light – games that are relatively easy to do with all 3 that would also work on listening skills and following directions.

You are at the perfect time for doing reading readiness activities with your kids. Remember, all kids need the following readiness skills in order to do well with school tasks. These specific readiness skills  are critical to being a successful learner. Reading help is lessened when these readiness skills are in place.

Readiness skills can be categorized into the following areas:

1. Matching – objects and or sounds
2. Size – small-medium-large; big-little; long-short; fat-thin
3. Shape – circles, squares, and triangles
4. Action – start – stop; slow-fast
5. Position – top – bottom; under-over; forward-backward; up-down; inside-outside
6. Relationships – same-different; parts-whole
7. Configurations – patterns & sequencing
8. Classifications – sorting objects into categories or arrange them into groups – by size, shape, or color
9. Combination Concepts and Time – positions & shapes or positions and matching and time
10. Listening & following directions (These skills are utilized in all of the above activities.)

Hope this helps.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

P.S. Be sure to ask your questions by clicking on the Ask Me a Question Button.

Thought you would find this article from the Sacramento Bee interesting.
cpeytondahlberg@sacbee.com
Published Tuesday, May. 26, 2009

Six-year-olds who don’t pay attention well in class apparently struggle throughout their school years, and reach age 17 with lower math and reading scores than their peers, a new study shows.

The study, by researchers from UC Davis Medical School and Michigan State University, dovetails with earlier findings that show attention problems can hinder a child’s performance throughout grade school.

Still, “I was very surprised by the consistency of our finding with the pattern found at earlier ages,” said Joshua Breslau, a UC Davis internal medicine professor who studies the consequences of early psychiatric problems.

“I really thought that things would get shaken up during adolescence,” he said.

The study suggests that parents should get involved early to turn things around, said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, another of the study’s UC Davis co- authors.

“One of the challenges in pediatrics is that most of the families I care for do not show up for evaluation until months and even years have gone by,” Miller said. “Do not assume that inattention is simply ‘normal’ child behavior that is outgrown.”

The best fixes, she said, involve behavior modification in class and at home, along with medication when appropriate. Parents, the child’s doctor and the child’s teacher all should get involved, she added.

The study, being published in the June edition of the journal Pediatrics, relied on data initially gathered by Breslau’s mother in Detroit to examine the long-term effects of low birth weight in urban and suburban youngsters.

Naomi Breslau’s work involved evaluating hundreds of children with low or normal birth weights when they turned 6, 11 and 17. Because the children were assessed in labs and by their teachers at age 6, there was detailed information on how well they could sit still, pay attention and finish what they started, along with other behavioral issues. At 17, their educational achievements were assessed by standardized tests instead of grades or teacher comments.

Those factors made the data well-suited for looking at other questions, said Breslau. He added that said his mother, a Michigan State epidemiology professor, suggested the collaboration after she had read one of his earlier scholarly papers.

Making fresh findings from older, existing data is common, but “not common enough,” said Breslau. “There is much more to be learned from studies than is ever explored.”

………………………………………..

As a parent there is a lot you can do to help your child yourself. Gaining an understanding of exactly what is hindering your child with learning will help. It usually isn’t just the attention problems that are hindering their learning. More often than not their are some areas of perception that aren’t working as efficiently as they should and could that are adding to their struggles. Find out if their are any underlying problems with the LD Dyslexia parent friendly screening tool.

Hope this is helpful. Be sure to leave your comments.

Bonnie terry, M Ed., BCET

Whether you have dyslexia, a learning disability, ADHD, or are just struggling with reading comprehension, it is due to one, two, or all three causes of comprehension.

Understanding the underlying cause of the comprehension problem is important because you do different things to address the different problems. So, view the video to understand the causes of reading comprehension problems.

Learn more on the 3 causes of reading comprehension and the 3 solutions to reading problems. Hope this is helpful.

Don’t forget to submit your questions at the right. Submit your comments below.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Can this really be done? Yes, it really just takes 5 minutes a day to improve reading skills. Research has shown that short quick sessions that last only 5 minutes does improve reading fluency tremendously.

Cecil Mercer, a researcher from the University of Florida, published his results from his study Effects of Fluency Intervention for Middle Schoolers with Specific Learning Disabilities in (2000) stating daily practice can be for as little as five or six minutes.

Here is a short video where I show you how you can improve reading fluency in just 5 minutes a day.

Substantial gains in reading fluency came from repeated oral reading of various sorts such as letters or words for five or six minutes a day. The key to the success was doing the repeated oral reading over a period of time e.g. six months to twenty-three months.

So, now view the video that shows you how you can help your children improve reading fluency in just 5 minutes a day.

Hope this was helpful.

Be sure to ask your questions by using the button under my photo to the right.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

The call is filling up fast – Reserve your spot now. I have had so many calls from parents this year that are wondering how to help their child and confused about why their child is struggling that I finally decided to have a webinar where I will present information and you will be able to ask me questions. Attendees will also receive a surprise FREE gift.

In fact, yesterday I was speaking with a friend that has a child that is having difficulty. His wife was looking online for programs to help them figure out why their son is having problems. Their cost would be $2500.00 to $3000.00. I could not believe it; I almost choked on my lunch. It should not cost you that much to get help!

So, I’m hosting a FREE Live Webinar on Wed April 29th at 4pm.

Searching for answers to why your child struggles in school?

Now it’s your chance to ask me, LD Specialist and Educational Therapist Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET your questions. The FREE Live Webinar is on Wednesday April 29th at 4PM Pacific Time.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/423802626

You’ll learn about:

1. The most common cause of reading problems
2. How to find out if your child actually has a learning problem, dyslexia, or learning disabilities.
3. How to help your child…Know where to start and what types of activities you should do to help your child learn with ease.
You will be able to ask your questions regarding your children and why they struggle with schoolwork.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/423802626

Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested in it.

Thanks! There is limited space & I’ll be doing a massive mailing this weekend, so you’ll want to reserve your space early.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET…
Bonnie has been teaching for over 35 years and has created numerous books, games, and guides to help students reach their full potential. She specializes in helping parents and teachers identify and address learning problems. Bonnie is a nationally known expert and contributing author to numerous educational journals and magazines including: The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, Homeschooling Parent, Parent’s Monthly, and The LINK Newspaper, RAW (Real Authentic Women), CEC Today, Education Update, and LDA-CA.

Deborah Kaplan, founder and director of Home Tutoring Plus, will also be on the call sharing additional insights. She is a credentialed teacher and pioneer in the field of home tutoring and she speaks regularly at professional educational conferences such as those of the National Tutoring Association and the Education Industry Association.

The webinar will be recorded, but you MUST register to access the recording if you can’t attend live.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/423802626

Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested in it.

Thanks! There is limited space & I’ll be doing another massive mailing weekend, so you’ll want to reserve your space early.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

I’ve written often about how we learn by seeing, hearing, and doing. But, we also learn through the olfactory system, smell.

In fact, smell actually plays an intricate part of our lives, of our sensory world, in the way we act. The process of recognition of a place is accomplished by our sense of smell. Think about this for a minute. The dentist’s office has certain smells related to it, so does the doctor’s office. Our homes smell wonderfully inviting when we’ve been baking or cooking a delicious dinner. We like to be in our homes when they smell good. A movie theater has another smell, as does a candy store. On the other hand, there are places we don’t enjoy being at as much, due to the odors. For instance a locker room after a sports event can be full of odors we don’t want to be near.

So, what does this have to do with learning? Our sense of smell adds an additional component to learning; it incorporates another sense so the brain is activated with an emotional and biological stimulus. Any time our brain is activated in multiple ways learning is affected, either positively or negatively.

Classrooms can have a variety of odors in them. Most of the time they are good odors. But, sometimes they aren’t. For example, when a classroom has just had new carpeting put in, there is usually a pretty noxious odor from the make-up of the carpet. Some severe educational consequences can occur due to this.

When the olfactory system is inundated with noxious odors such as formaldehyde that is out-gassing from carpet, children can suffer health, mood, and behavior problems that undermine school performance and productivity. Children can become allergic to their classrooms from carpet out-gassing.

This actually happened to my daughter when she was in the 4th grade. Her class was moved into a new portable classroom during the second month of the school year. The carpet did not have time to ‘outgas’. My daughter came home every day with uncontrollable coughing. She would get some relief at home by morning, and go back to school. By the time she came home again she was worse than when she left in the morning. I took her into the doctor after the 2nd day and then every day for an additional 3 days. We couldn’t figure out what was going on. So I went with her to school to see if I could see anything there that was causing the problem. Upon opening the classroom door I almost keeled over. The odor was horrific! And, at that time I was an asthmatic. I immediately started wheezing. I knew what the problem was.

So, we had to educate the school about the problem. We actually gave some solutions to help the carpet odor dissipate quickly. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite follow the suggestion [sprinkling the carpet every day after school with baking soda and then vacuuming it up every morning before school]. Instead they placed an open box of baking soda in the classroom. So my daughter ended up wearing a mask whenever she was in the classroom for nine weeks. After nine weeks the carpet odor had finally neutralized and she didn’t need to spend her days wearing a max.

The reason I’m sharing this is not so much what happened to my daughter, because she had an extreme reaction to the carpet out-gassing. But the rest of the class was also affected. The absentee rate of students and the teacher in that class due to respiratory problems was higher during that time period than the rest of the school. The behavior of the students in the class during that time frame was also awful. So did maximum learning take place during that time? Of course not.

Other environmental issues that can affect learning

Children can even become allergic their schools when construction is going on from all the molds that are stirred up during the construction. Also classroom pets can create havoc with children. Sometimes children don’t even know they have an allergy to pet dander and they end up being stuffed up in the classroom, which affects their ability to hear clearly. Some children respond to pet dander by becoming restless or irritable. So, you want to check and see if the classroom has a pet. Sometimes the behavior problem you child is having is NOT due to their not following directions, but is due to being allergic to pet dander from the class guinea pig.

So, when we are looking to create an optimal learning place for our children, let’s keep in mind it’s not just the hearing, seeing, and doing. It’s also the smells we smell that lead us to places where we feel good and safe and secure. When we feel good, safe, and secure, we learn with ease. So, let’s create good smelling classrooms to help our children thrive in learning situations!

Learn about the 3 roadblocks to reading, writing, and math success.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Study: 1 in 4 first-grade classes reach high-quality standards
Only 23% of first-grade classes were considered of high quality for their academic, social and emotional climate, according to a study of 820 classrooms published in the Elementary School Journal. An additional 31% were socially supportive but of low academic quality, while the rest were rated as either mediocre (28%) or of low quality (17%). Education Week (premium article access compliments of Edweek.org)

There is a way for you to hlp your child improve their skills.Gain 2-4 Years in Reading, Writing, and Math.

But what about an answer if the reading problem is #3 (lack of language or vocabulary)?
Writes J. K.

Remember, there are 3 roadblocks to reading success. The third problem, lack of vocabulary or language can be addressed in a variety of ways. First, a recap on the 3 roadblocks:
3 Most Common Reading Roadblocks
(whether your child is dyslexic, has an identified learning disability, is ADD/ADHD, is homeschooled, is falling through the cracks at school, or is gifted)

1.    The problem is phonetic related, where a child jumbles or mispronounces the words as they are trying to decode (the ability to sound out printed words) or encode (the ability to put letters to the sounds that make up a word). You have no idea what the word is that they are trying to read until you look at it yourself.
2.    The problem is a reading fluency/visual tracking problem where it takes them what seems like forever to read the sentence or they have skipped, omitted, or repeated words when reading.
3.    The problem is a lack of language or vocabulary, which hinders comprehension or understanding what you read.

There are two solutions to this 2nd roadblock: lack of language or vocabulary. I just wrote this article a short time ago. It addresses the first solution to improving lack of language and vocabulary through note taking.

Improve Language and Vocabulary Through Note Taking Using Graphic Organizerrs

What does writing have to do with reading? Every week or two your child comes home with a writing assignment of some sort that is related to reading. Or, if you are homeschooling, you are giving a writing assignment to your child. First they have to read a selection and then they need to write something from the selection, whether it is short answers to questions, a paragraph summary, or a full-fledged report. They actually had to understand what they read, the vocabulary and language of it e.g.: new vocabulary words, science terms, or social studies facts. Being able to pull out the important information of what you read, understanding what you read, is directly related to being able to write with ease.

It doesn’t matter if a child has dyslexia, a learning disability, is ADHD, or is even gifted. Understanding what you read, reading comprehension, is HARD for many children. And to have to write about what they have read, it’s even harder! For them it is like having their teeth pulled without the Novocain. My own kids’ reaction to any writing assignment was to stare at blank sheets of paper, totally frozen, not knowing what to write.

You know that to have accurate comprehension, you need to be able to utilize the information that you read. And, you need to be able to communicate with others about what you read. One of the ways to do this is to be able to write about what you have read.

So, after years of trial and error, attending numerous seminars, and research from the National Reading Panel, I realized the solution was to use graphic organizers.

When my students had writing assignments, they brought in the notes they had done at school. Their notes were done with a webbing method.  The webbing method of note taking uses the size of circles to indicate the importance of ideas and connecting lines to indicate relationships. Typically the main topic is in the center with a large circle. Then important supporting ideas have slightly smaller circles and the less important ideas have the smallest circles. Lines from one circle to another indicate that the concepts in the connected circles are related in some way.

The problem was that although those students could do the webbing assignment while in class, even using the new vocabulary words, when they went to actually use the web format to write from, they were stuck, frozen again. This was because their notes were all over the place – coming out in many circles just like a spider web. They couldn’t get focused on what was important and what the connections were.

I knew there had to be a better way for my kids to be able to take notes and then actually be able to utilize them. So I developed numerous fill-in-the-blank note taking, paragraph writing, and essay writing forms that were designed with the end use in mind. My students would be able to not only take the notes, but they would also be able to use their notes to write a paragraph or essay from them. Now they didn’t have to stare at blank sheets of paper. They would be able to pull out the important information from what they read and then fill-in-the-blanks of the graphic organizerrs. Their stress level came down, and they were able to write for the first time, and actually be successful! I compiled these forms in the book Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills.

Whether you are homeschooling or not, NOW you have the opportunity to make your child’s writing assignments easy for them. They don’t need to sweat and struggle through another writing assignment. You don’t have to sweat and struggle through your child’s writing assignments any longer either!

To read more about Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills, go to www.bonnieterrylearning.com and click on books or to get a special price, click on The Learning Pack.

To keep the length of the post to a minimum, I’ll post the second solution in another post.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET                                                                                                                                                               Board Certified Educational Therapist #10167

P.S.:
If you haven’t signed up for the FREE homework & teaching tips, go to the upper right hand and sign up! Be sure to pass this link along to anyone you think may be interested.  Thanks!